Code HISBI! (Help, I'm Surrounded By Idiots!): The Rewrite
by TinyHippo
Summary: The rewrite of my first Akatsuki Kittens Story. Because I was god-awful first time around. Bit of language, though. - Hidan and all. We're... a group. A gang. An organization, if you will. No official name, though we called ourselves the Lost Souls. And then a box of cats fell into our laps. - Disclaimer: I don't own jack (insert curse word here). The OC's are MEIN though, okay?
1. Chapter 1: Cats

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**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any part of the Naruto franchise!**

**Warning: Language. (The unspoken "duh" hangs at the end of it.)**

**Beta: Ha, what a funny joke!... I wish I had one... Not even my brother is here to help me right now, and this chapter is kinda late as is...**

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**Chapter One**

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"What the hell, un?" yowled a bright yellow cat. A kitten, to be more specific. It was _not _blonde, or dyed, or yellow-but-slightly-burnt-orange. It was just yellow. The yellow kitten's tail lashed angrily, his frustration with the current dilemma obvious.

"Watch your tail, brat," growled a dark red kitten. "You keep hitting me in the face with it."

"Sorry, Danna," apologized the yellow one. "But it's not my fault I'm not used to having a tail, hm."

"Ha!" laughed a silver cat. "You have a fucking tail!"

"You do, too, idiot," glared a brown one.

"Itachi, do you know what's going on?" asked a large, blue cat.

"No. But I do believe Leader-sama will tell us soon," stated a black cat with, surprisingly, _not_ spinning red eyes, but charcoal gray ones. "It seems our chakra is not working, though."

"Yeah, it seems so," Kisame nodded.

"Everybody, calm down," ordered the orange cat, obviously the leader. A calm lavender cat sat next to him.

"TOBI IS A KITTY!" bounced a hyperactive cat. I don't need to tell what color his pelt was, I think you all can guess. Hint: It wasn't Kakuzu.

"Yes, I have noticed that we are all... felines. But that is no reason to lose our heads," the leader nodded. "Our main priority should be food and hopefully information, while we're at it, which means getting out of this box."

Konan opened her mouth to agree when- _BOOM!_

An explosion shuddered the box, throwing it to the side.

The cats were rolled around, making their heads spin nauseatingly.

"_Hell- I mean, heck yeah, bi- bro!_" cheered a rough, yet clearly feminine voice.

"_Yay!_" cheered a younger one.

The cats stumbled to their feet, looking around what appears to be a large yard filled with storehouses. As their vision cleared, the Akatsuki noticed a couple of figures jumping and cheering at the destroyed-nearly-beyond-recognition pieces of flaming metal. One seemed to be a teenager, the other... a small child?

"To think that my little Angel blew this one almost entirely on her own," the taller figure gushed, seemingly wiping away a fake tear. "It just makes me so proud, ya know?"

"No, Blaire, you helped, too! Remember when I needed your distraction to set it?" the smaller girl, Angel, asked, attempting to console her obvious sister figure.

"Oh, Ange, you're too sweet," the teen sniffled. "I just can't believe it... My little Angel, already making her first bomb!"

The cats blinked the spots out of their eyes and wiggled their way to a black path, hoping to escape unnoticed before tracking the girls down to see what they were up to.

Unfortunately, they forgot that bright yellow, orange, and blue cats weren't quite that inconspicuous.

"Whoa! Yellow kitty!" the girl called Angel gasped, running surprisingly fast for a chakra-less eight year old.

Blaire followed after the child quickly, wondering what could have possibly drawn the attention from the beautiful explosion to... well, anything seemed insignificant compared to an explosion. To her, at least. She hoped it wasn't something too bad, after all. This day had gone _really _well, maybe she should treat the kid to ice cream, kids liked that, right? and did Ange say something about cats?

Blaire was half in her thoughts of ice cream and if should she get a book on parenting, after all, that was what Leader had done, wasn't it? The other half of her thoughts, however, were full on Angel (if the aforementioned thoughts were not considered "full of Angel").

"Kid, whatcha lookin' at over there?" she called, casually strolling. Or at least that's what it would seem like to the regular human bean. To the neko-fied nin, however, it seemed apparent that her laid-back shoulders, while somewhat relaxed, were still slightly tensed. And her hands, though sloppily thrown in her pockets, were loosely holding onto a suspiciously bomb-shaped lump.

Trust them.

They'd had enough incidents of Deidara trying to bomb the Uchiha to know what a bomb-shaped lump looked like.

While they had been shaping up the older of the two, they had failed to notice the younger one. Cats' minds seemed pretty one-tracked, from what they've experienced so far.

"Kitties! Berry, there are kitties here!" Angel said excitedly before beginning to coo at the cats. "Aren't you so pretty? Look at your purple fur! It's _sooo _soft, like velvet! If Mama-"

"Ange. Not on the field."

"Fine, if _Leader _lets me keep you, then I wanna call you Velvet!" she grinned.

"Ange," Blaire, or _Berry_, though the latter was most likely a nickname, sighed through her nose. She hated being the bad guy, but it had to be done. "Hate to break it to ya, but Leader might not-"

Angel cut her of with the most heartbroken look any child could break out. Her burnt orange hair was brushed out of her face as she summoned the inner moe, making fake tears at _just the right amount_ so that they prickled at her eyes and made them shine, but not so much so that she actually started crying. Rule one of puppy eyes- never oversell it.

Blaire/Berry looked away, but it was too late. She had to look back now. It would be a shame to ignore a child so cute. Even the manly Uchiha agreed- Angel was nearly as cute as Sasuke was (not in _that _way, Uchiha-cest shippers.) when he was that age. Of course, Itachi had killed the cute boy's entire family at that age, but still.

Cute.

The cats vaguely wondered what the chances of them running were, but it was still awkward, learning how to walk on all fours, and this whole "plus-claws-and-tails" thing wasn't really helping.

Plus, if their original assumptions were correct, these people were involved in an organization. Which meant, if they were kept, they could get food, shelter, and information, all at once.

Three birds with one stone.

Why not?

The orange leader stared Hidan into submission when the Jashinist very nearly hissed at the small girl who bent to pick him up. Pein then just looked at his Akatsuki and _glared _at them until they got over their egos and lay back their ears to look cute.

The girl ran a hand through her black locks, pausing to fiddle with a highlighted red tip. She had been a bit surprised when the apprehensive cats' personalities took a one-eighty and pulled the "Puss-in-Boots" look at her, but under the continuous stare of her subordinate and the cats, she nearly had no choice.

Blaire hesitantly glanced back at Angel, who took this as the signal to tip her head down slightly and look up a bit more.

Blaire sighed and muttered something along the lines of, "Never underestimate the power of cute," and groaned in what sounded like resignation. "Okay. You win. Congrats, Rat."

The cats blinked a bit at the nickname. Who calls a kid "Rat"? In fact, who call a kid "Rat" while managing to make it sound _affectionate?_

But she picked up the cats and piled them high on her shoulders, head, and arms, and carried them away from the blast site before the cops showed up.

Blaire's boss was going to have her ass.

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**A/N: Welcome to the re-write of Code HISBI! (Help, I'm Surrounded by Idiots!)**

**I decided to rewrite this because... Urk... There was a volcano in Hampton... And I'm pretty sure I was stoned off my ass or something to that extent while writing my first Naruto fic... And... Every personality was pretty monotonous... And the mood swings... my God, the MOOD SWINGS my OC's had!**

**'Scuse me for a second... I think I just need to cry myself to sleep and remind myself of what a fucking idiot I am...**

**FML.**

**Anywhooozles... -wipes away snot-. I'm okay, now. And I know this is a bit overdue, but- HOLY MOTHER OF-**

***dodges flaming knives and pitchforks along with miscellaneous plastic silverware***

**OKAY! I GET IT! I'm sorry guys, but for Chrissake! I know, I promised this thing today, and I did do it today! (just, like, at ten or something, but what the fuck ever, dude.)**

**And anyway, as a final note, _these chapters may or may not be significantly shorter than the last versions._ I'm not sure yet. This chapter was kind of rushed, so... Yea.**

**OH! This is what happened when I was gone!**

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I NEVER HAVE COFFEE FOR A FUCKIN REASON C/B I'M SOOO HYPER RIGHT NOW AND I KNWO I TYPED C/B INSTAD OF B/C BUT I DON'T WANT TO MOVE MY COURSOR RIGHT NOW AND I MISSPALLED THAT SO BD AND HAZELNUT COFFEE IS THE SHIT AND OOPS I PUT BD INSTEAD OF BAD BUT I DON'T HAVE THE PURPOSE TO BCKSPCE ALL OF THIS SHIT NOW THAT I'VE TYPED IT AND I FUCKIN HATE USING THE ' KEY BECAUSE I DUN WANNA MOVE MY PINKY CUZ I WAS OUT IN THE COLD AND NOW SOME OF MY FINGERS ARE MOVING SLOWER THAN OTHERS AND ND AND AND OOPS I FORGOT THE A IN AND ON THE SECOND ONE BUT I DUN WANNA MOVE MY PINKEYYYY

FUCK I JUST USED IT TO HIT ENTER OPS AND I'M NOT EVEN FUCKING JOKING RIGHT NOW I HAD THREE CUPS OF COFFEE AND HAZELNUT IS THE SHIT AND I'D PROBABLY LOSE AT THE DRINKING GAMES MY FUTURE COLLEGE FRIENDS WILL PLAY WITH ME BECAUSE I'M SUCH A LIGHTWEIGHT

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I HAD SOOO MUCH COFFEE AND I THINK I MENTALLY TRAUMATIZED MY OLDER BROTHER'S GF OOPS BUT DON'T WORRY BE HAPPY BECAUSE I HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE AND WE WERE MAKING FACES AT HER THROUGH THE DUNKIN DONUTS WINDOW AND FLIPPING HIM THE DOUBLE BIRD WHENEVER HE CAME TOO CLOSE TO DOING THE DIRTY (OR MAKING OUT IDEK) AND MY LEFT PINKEY IF THAWED OUT BUT MY RIGHT PINKEY IS STILL HURTING LIKE ALL HEAVENLY FUCK AND WE TOOK PICTURES OF THEM TOGETHER AND EVIL LAUGHED BUT I WAS QUIET AT THE BEGINNING AND THEN THE COFFEE KICKED IN. AND SHE HELD MY CHIHJUAHUA WRONG AND I;M NOT SURE ABOUT HER BUT TOO FUCKING BAD KENJI CAUSE THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT YOU AREN'T GOING TO DATE HER FOR REALLY LONG OR MARRY HER OR EVEN GO TO THE SAME COLLEGE AS HER SO GET THE FUCK OVER IT I'M NOT CYNICAL I'M HYPER AND I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO REREAD THIS BEFORE I POST CAUSE I WANNA RUN OUTSIDE BUT IT'S TOO DARK AND I HIT THE ' KEY WITH MY RING MEN FINGER INSTEAD OF MY PINKEY HA IN YOUR FACE WORLD

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I'M GONNA WAKE UP ALL FUCKING CALM AND SHIT TOMORROW AND FACEPALM BECAUSE THE THINGS I'M POSTING RIGHT NOW DON'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE

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WHY DO I CUSS SO MUCH WHEN I'M HYPERRRRR?!

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i'M USING MY RING MEN FINGER INSTEAD OF MY PINKEY HA I'M CHEATING THE FUCKING SYSTEM, WHAT NOW, BITCHES?i'm so sorry, you aren't bitches, i'm sure you are all wonderful fucking people i would love to meet in person unless you're a pedo faking to be a ten year old girl or some shit i'm safe on the web, just like my elementary school guidance counselor told me to be

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IDEK WHat I'M DOING I'M JUST SCROLLING THROUGH THE QUOTEV FEED (IS THIS EVEN CLLED FEED?) and LIKEING SHIT THAT I LIKE AND OOPS LIKEING DOESN'T HAVE AN E

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**So yea... That's a thing... that happened... -sighs-**

**Good night.**


	2. Chapter 2: Blaire

**A/N: MERRY FUCKIN' CHRISTMAS, YOU BEAUTIFUL THINGS, YOU! I worked my butt off, and here it is! I love you all very much! Have wonderful holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, get sick from eating too many sprinkles, and know that you are all important to me. I think this was the hardest thing I've written in forever, since there was no action and barely any good comedy. Sorry about that - . -" The rest of my stories may not be updated until January, but I hope you all can hold until then.**

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**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any part of the Naruto franchise!**

**Warning: Language. (The unspoken "duh" hangs at the end of it.) And please note that this is a work of _fiction_, and I have taken liberties. Every and any relation between real people and my OC's are purely coincidental.**

**Beta: Ha, what a funny joke!... I wish I had one...**

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**Chapter Two**

**First Person, Limited, Blaire**

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I led Angel through the empty streets of the outskirt of NY.

The cats were kind of weighing me down, but they were nothing compared to the weight training Boss had us go through back when I was still an apprentice.

Soon we came across a forest and trekked through until a barbed wire fence with a "WARNING: GOVERNMENT PROPERTY/ ALL TRESSPASSERES WILL BE PROSECUTED" sign, as well as quite a few warnings about electric currents.

I just ignored the warnings and army-crawled through the roots of a tree and some plants that looked suspiciously like poison ivy. Angel followed obediently.

We came out the other side with no rashes (Yay for misleading plant breeding!) and followed a dirt trail.

"Hey, Berry, do ya think Leader's gonna let me keep 'em?" Angel asked.

"Probably. If you pull the ultimate face of cute on her, she'll have no choice. We all know you're her favorite, Ange," I answered, struggling to find a better way to hold a particularly wriggly kit.

"Hm..." she said thoughtfully. "M'kay, Berry."

I finally came to a concrete slab in the middle of the foliage. In the middle of the worn square of rock sat a rusty manhole cover.

I let Angel do the honors, seeing as she only had one cat to hold, and she jabbed her index finger into the pattern of the grate. She traced concentric circles before a small square sank into the rest of the design, making a hole just big enough for her to pull the cover up with a few tiny fingers.

We jumped down into the hole, pulling the cover closed above us.

The cats watched this with mild interest, before wrinkling their noses at the smell of gross sewage.

I ignored them and took a nearly invisible millimeter-thick rod of steel and stuck it in a small hole in the brickwork. I shoved the wall back with my shoulder as to not hurt the kittens, and we opened up the way to an un-bricked tunnel, dug decades ago by what were called New York Sand Hogs.

They had apparently dug a huge underground labyrinth, and my fearless leader had taken advantage of that.

We traveled for nearly ten minutes, watching as the tunnel got narrower by the step. And, at the end, was a dead end.

Or not.

I shifted the cats until I had a free hand, and I pressed my bare thumb against a small crack in the wall, seventh from the far left, thirteenth from the bottom. It glowed and opened up to a room.

A brightly lit, clean, totally-not-cave-like room.

Mind blowing, right?

It's like stepping into Narnia, or the TARDIS.

After traveling through the ridiculously confusing halls, we came to a door just like the others. Angel knocked on it and went in as soon as she heard the "Enter" from inside. I poured the cats out of my arms and made "stay here" motions to them while I closed the door behind us.

Boss sat on the other side of her mahogany desk. I rather liked it. Like, you could facedesk as many times as you wanted and it wouldn't leave a mark. Not even a gross smear of body gunk. Don't ask, Boss had left me in charge the couple of times when she went off on vacation- I mean, to important meeting with the branches.

That's right.

We're more than a group of five-plus-one-kid, we have actual _branches _all across the world. (Actually, just here, two more across the US, like, three in Europe, and two in Asia. You have no idea how many times I've made a request to vacatio- er, _meet _with the leaders in Osaka with Boss, but at least one of us has to keep shit in order over here and she honestly needs the break from leading us idiots.)

"Report, Second, Number Forty-Two," Boss ordered, monotonous.

I saluted, heels together, somehow managing not to grin when I saw Angel copy me like she always did because she was so gosh darn _cute _when she had that all-business look in her eyes.

"Mission complete. Time: seventeen hundred hours, approximate. Warehouse successfully infiltrated and destroyed. No injuries. No casualties," I barked like a good little soldier.

Boss nodded and handed me a manila folder of crap I had to fill out, her fingertips barely touching it as I carefully grabbed the other end of it, taking it from her with minimum skin-to-skin contact.

Boss never liked touching other people, unless it was face-to-fist (that is, her opponents face to her fist). And, even though she didn't spaz when any of the Souls touched her, she still stiffened up when we hugged her or gave her birthday noogies.

"Assessment of Forty-Two?" she asked, her green eyes flashing like they always did when she was thinking.

"A clean and timely done job, ma'am. Though a sentry nearly caught her 'laying the egg'," I began, making sure I was using the correct coding even though I never use the wrong words. I was Second-in-Command, for Pete's sake! I never screw up! "I was able to give a suitable distraction for the egg to be set and for us to clear the blast radius."

She nodded. "At ease, Second, Forty-Two."

We relaxed and Angel ran to her adoptive mama. "Mama Song!" she cried.

Boss scooped her up, the only one of us she would willingly touch, and nuzzled her head like a lion and her cub. "Hello, _mi __à__ngel,_" she cooed.

"Mama Song, will you do me a favor?" Angel asked, well, _angelically._

"That depends, _Àngel_. What are the conditions?" she asked. I could tell she was already on guard, and could practically _hear _her thoughts, whether it was really that obvious (unlikely) or if I had just spent _way _too much time with her (most probable).

_ She's going to break out the puppy eyes, isn't she?_

"After the mission was done, I found some kitties! And they're all alone and hungry and need a place to stay! So I was wondering... if we could nurse them back to health?" Angel offered, turning up her puppy eyes to a simple six-out-of-ten instead of the eight-out-of-ten she had pulled on me earlier. Trust me, if she had pulled a ten-out-of-ten, the world would explode in "moe moe kawaii desu"-ness.

Boss's thoughts ran through her head, and I sensed a certain amount of pride.

_Ah, so if I say yes, she wins. If I say no, she'll guilt trip the living hell out of me, and she'll win, _Boss thought.

"You're going to be a master manipulator when you grow up," she commented. Angel just smiled her little-girl smile. Boss sighed and brushed the brown bangs from Angel's face. "Let's just skip the unnecessary bit where I fall into your trap and just throw them into the Souls as pets?"

"Yes!" Angel cheered, fist pumping.

"Now why don't you gather everybody in the lounge and we'll have a brush-up on your formal introductions? I think I might add another member soon, anyways," Boss mused.

"Okay, Mama Song!" Angel cheered. She ran off, leading the kittens away.

I waited until the door was finally closed before popping the question. "What's bothering ya, Boss?"

She sighed and ran a hand through her model-esque locks.

If she were normal, I could imagine her profile on a dating site.

Name: Echo Song.

Occupation: Leader of an insane group of teens hoping to become a world power.

Age: Twenty, but seems either older or younger than that, depending on the alignment of the planets or some obscure shit like that.

Looks: Tall-ish, brunette, green eyes that could eat your soul, Caucasian/Hispanic.

Weight: None-of-your-business,-mister.

Extra?: Aside from being an unofficial mom to me, Angel, and three others, somehow managing to hug us despite being haphephobic, and being the master paperwork ninja? Nothing much.

"Those cats... Don't they remind you of certain someones? Someone from a story a long time ago?"

I blinked and thought. The orange one with polka-dots, the leader... The blue brute... The deceptively hyperactive mask-wearing fiend...

"Whoa," I said in realization. "It's the frickin'-"

"No names," she interrupted. "That would be violation of the fandom treaty. Do you not recall the casualties of The Great Whovian/Narutard war?"

I shivered involuntarily. "And in the end, when the Hetalians and Homestuck fans joined..."

We both shuddered.

This is why we don't have mass biannual meetings anymore.

When all forty-two of us join in the same base... chaos ensues.

Yes, we were nerds. Problem? I could still kick Chuck Norris's ass seven ways to Sunday, and Boss could take down three of him at once. Don't judge.

We were mostly work, hardly play (though for me, blowing up shit _is _play), but when you finally found something you like, you become an avid follower of it. Nobody else watches Naruto, though I'm sure someone else in our base is a Whovian, and the other is a Brony...

"Nobody could have foreseen the violence the fans could cause..." she frowned, holding a strange scar in the vague shape of Italy on her arm.

"And we had to burn all of our merch," I mourned. We had a moment of silence for lost years' worth of ComicCons and NekoCons and basically any kind of Con we could manage to get a mission in the area of.

"And I'm pretty sure that, under the couch, there might still be Sonic Screwdrivers and kunai..." I trailed off.

Neither of us really wanted to check.

"Should we confront them?" I asked, trying to shake the memories of darker times.

"No," Boss answered. "We'll wait. Then, when the time comes, _if _the time comes, we'll play dumb. They'll be our prisoners until they can get back. But until then, not a word."

I nodded and opened the door while Boss clicked her tongue, like she was calling a horse.

Two lions, that's right, _lions _crawled from a trapdoor underneath her desk and followed her like really obedient dogs.

How's _that _for over-funded?

I think Boss suddenly realized something, because she paused in our walk to the lounge.

"I suddenly feel a strange amount of pity for the cats," she told me.

I nodded sagely. "Those poor, unfortunate kits."

I thought for a second before I whispered to the world, sure that Boss could hear me but not really caring. "Sorry, kittens, but welcome to the madness that is the Lost Souls."

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**So how did I do? Better? Worse? Glob-awful? Anyhow, I want to see if I can get a review! Just one, measly, little review. Please? It makes the chapters come faster. I'm not even joking. Like, I work myself into a writing frenzy when I get reviews. **

**Oh- and next up is Echo Song's POV! **

**I think I want to do one POV per chapter until I decide who I want to be my main character. **

**Maybe it'll be Blaire. Or Echo. Heck- maybe even _Angel_. (IDK, I don't think she got enough page-time last time around.)**

**Any input would be greatly appreciated!**


	3. Chapter 3: Echo

**(A/N at the bottom)**

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**Chapter Three**

**First Person, Limited, Echo Song**

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I walk purposefully towards the lounge, easily navigating the confusing halls, never slowing in my steps.

_Rule one of being a leader- Never hesitate. Never doubt yourself. You are the leader. You are the one with all the answers, always._

I watched as Blaire kept a respectful distance behind me, my lions not far behind.

_Rule two of being a leader- Never fall behind._

I trekked to a door and paused as my Second shadowed my movements until she stopped a bit ahead of me, opening the door and waiting for me and the lions, Aurum and Argentum, to enter before closing the door behind us. I nodded with just a small inclination of the head.

_Rule three of being a leader- Always display small amounts of gratitude, but gratitude nonetheless._

I strolled through the doors, looking over at the four teens, self-proclaimed young adults.

They stood in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, right arms up in salutes. Blaire joined them, making the number rise to five, walking calmly to the end of the line and saluting.

_Rule four of being a leader- Demand respect._

I searched their eyes for weakness and met only steel and professionalism. _That's my team_, I thought, pleased with my results.

I nearly chuckled when I saw little Angel, barely reaching everybody else's hips.

Angel had her "serious face" on, a small glimmer of a glare in her eyes, just enough to startle most grown men. After all, what kind of a child had that fierce look in her eyes? What kind of a seven year old could hold herself so seriously? Ange had her chin up, shoulders back, and she looked… She looked so darn _cute _that I mentally reminded myself to hug her after the meeting.

"At ease," I intoned. Arms fell at the same time, in perfect synchronization.

I loved my (very organized, very precise, well-oiled-machine of an) organization.

And I especially loved telling them what to do.

I loved fighting, which some may find odd since I tended to avoid conflict. I believed in leading from the front. Watching my troops fight, these teens of ages ranging from fifteen to twenty (me) achieving amazing things, going through small armies as if they were water… It was like watching a dance. Sure, they mostly trained separately, but when we actually fought? We fought together. It was like watching pieces of a puzzle fall together, like different paints coming together to form a painting, or different parts of a machine being assembled.

Small miracles.

"Informal introductions," I said, snapping back into reality. "New recruits."

Angel stepped forward to nudge the pastel cats into view.

They stood with their backs close to each other, taking us in and keeping us in their sights. Or, mostly, on me.

The one closest to me stepped forward, realizing what I was doing.

"Alphonse. Technician. Seventeen years old, and I have been in this organization since I was five," he said blandly. Alphonse ran a hand through his dark hair, his glasses flashing dangerously as he straightened his tie.

His name was Alphonse, as he had stated earlier, but he didn't let anyone call him any variation of his name. But though he was just Alphonse to us, he was a certifiable genius outside of the walls. Graduating high school at sixteen and becoming what society called a recluse, he now lived with his adopted family and fixed small robots for children in the outskirts of New York, rarely doing anything outside due to a disease he'd had since childhood.

Or at least that's what we say he does.

Alphonse's "childhood disease" had been real, all right. But he had cured it easily when he was fifteen, and he rarely goes outside because he is in love with his work. He honestly could have graduated when he was fifteen, but he thought that would be too prodigious and didn't want the public attention. (Not that graduating at sixteen was any worse, but he thought you were only a teenager at ages sixteen to nineteen, and he didn't want to graduate as "a child barely out of the pubescent stages of life".)

The Pein cat nodded at him as the rest of the cats studied him with their eyes. I mentally catalogued this and noticed Alphonse doing the same.

The shorter girl nodded and stepped up to the plate, bouncing up and down a bit as she saw the kitties. "_So cuuute~!_" she whispered, visibly trying not to squeal. "Um, hey kitties! I'm Mabel Song. I'm fifteen and the Poisons Mistress, and I've been here for… I've been here for basically forever, so, yeah!"

Mabel was one of the few lucky ones to have a last name. And, yes, she was my younger sister. Her features were more rounded than mine, assuring everyone that she'd look young no matter how old she got. Her brown hair kissed her shoulders, unlike my hair that hit the bottom of my shoulder blades, and her eyes were a few shades darker than mine.

She was a perfectly average student, all As and Bs and occasional Cs. She went to school, but I was overprotective so she didn't go to any after-school events with her friends. She liked to tie little ribbons in her hair and wore boots all the time except for gym class because she thought they would be the most fashionable thing someday, so why wait?

The end.

Very simple, very normal.

What a nice cover for such a nice girl.

The fact of the matter was that Mabel was a bit of a genius. Especially when it came to plants. She knew all the ins and outs of poisons and their antidotes, and her memorization skills were uncanny.

Her hair ribbons had small needles woven into them, hidden so carefully that, even if you tugged on them, you wouldn't get pricked. Unless she wanted you to get pricked. Or maybe even stabbed. Mabel also wore her boots, which were chock-full of small pockets on the inside that she filled with pressed leaves and small plastic baggies of liquified death.

Angel stepped forward with as much commanding presence as she could muster, which was a surprising amount for someone her size. "My name is Angel Song and- and I'm an- I'm the forty-second apprentice ever and I'm gonna be… I'm gonna be super strong when I grow up and I'm gonna be super sneaky and in-fil-trate buildings and make them go _boom!_" The yellow cat and Blaire looked at her approvingly and I resisted the urge to coo like the doting adoptive mother I was. She "oh"-ed like she had just remembered something and tacked on, "Oh, and I'm seven years old," to the end of her introduction.

She was so cute that even I admitted to it. She had rust-colored, orange hair that Mabel had waterfall braided and big hazel eyes. She would've made a good seductress, but even if she had wanted to do that, knowing myself, I would make sure that her request for the job would probably get lost in the mail. It would feel like I was whoring out my daughter, and that was a no-no.

Angel went to second grade, loved to color, and was convinced that Santa was not a man, but a rabbit, and the gift-wrapping gig was only a part-time thing that he did since the Easter Bunny had taken his spot. The breaking-and-entering thing was only going to last for so long, though, because he had irons in the fire but it would have to do for now because he couldn't really do much in this economy. And she also managed to convince half of the second grade that, too.

We all paused for a moment for the next guy to go, but he was completely out of it, so we just ignored him and moved on. He could wait until the end.

Blaire stood a bit straighter as she spoke. "I'm Blaire, I'm eighteen, and I am the maker of things that go boom. Technically called the Pyrotechnician, with a little bonus of being Second-in-Command, or Second."

Blaire… She was, as she had put it, "the maker of things that go boom".

After finally getting out of high school, her own personal hell, as she had called it, she had decided to stay out of education for as long as possible and had taken up a good paying job at a bookstore. During her school days, she didn't care for any of the students or teachers, and she wasn't afraid to show it. Everybody was too scared to approach her because of some rumors floating about that she had taken down two seniors in her freshman year with only a matchstick. (This was not entirely true, as she'd had a _lighter_, and had actually done this when she was about twelve.) Blaire, however, was not bothered at all by the solitude since she had a friend in the middle school just next door who was her adopted sister.

Even her appearance screamed "rebel", what with her dark clothes, elbow-long gloves, and several piercings in both of her ears. The dark red streaks in her black hair (which many claimed to be blood leftover from the seniors) were seemingly permanent, though, and never faded (though she actually just re-dyed it once a month, instead of once every two. Blaire, though she doesn't seem to be a vain person, is rather fond of her hair).

We waited for the only one who hadn't gone yet, and he stuck his little finger into his ear. Blaire and Mabel shared yuck faces before I cleared my throat. The blond boy jumped, startled, and noticed that everybody was staring at him. He pointed a finger towards himself, saying, "Who, me?"

I didn't look, but I could _hear _Alphonse face palm.

"Hey, I'm Allen," he started awkwardly, deciding that no, it was _totally not weird _to talk to the cats as if they were people ("Which they may be," a small voice in my mind whispered.) since everybody else seemed to be doing it. "I'm the Runner, manager of all the messaging and recon… stuff. I've been here for twelve years, and I'm also nineteen." He then posed. "And I'm single."

Alphonse's forehead met his hand again.

"At ease." I sighed through my nose.

Allen and Alphonse, the two boys of the group… They were polar opposites.

Alphonse had dark hair, glasses, and wore a tie with his lab coat, while Allen wore simple tattered jeans and his pale-yellow scarf that seemed to accentuate his blond hair that stuck in every direction under the sun. Alphonse was cold and calculating, and Allen seemed to never run out of random catchphrases to shout out to the world (though,since the Fandom treaty, he has had to dial back on the references).

But somehow, somewhere along the line, Allen became convinced that, despite him being the older one, Alphonse was his "senpai" and therefore his best friend.

"Allen, did you just...?" Alphonse started.

"Just what?" Allen asked back, finally dropping the cringe-worthy pose.

"Did you just attempt to flirt with _cats?_" Alphonse asked, incredulous.

"Well, I have to get practice _somewhere_," Allen said, rolling his eyes as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And I obviously can't get practice _here. _There aren't any girls!"

Alphonse raised his arms wildly, gesturing to the whole room filled with four fairly annoyed people, agitated at being considered "not a girl". Even Angel was getting her angry pout face on.

"Well, that is to say, no girls I can _hit on_."

At this, we all relaxed. Allen had done something smart, which was a first for him.

"After all, one is so unavailable that if she decided to have actual children, a part of her will just split off and she'll reproduce asexually, one is just a toddler, one might accidentally poison me when she cooks me something, and the last one will set fire to everything that I hold dear," he added on, not knowing that he had just rekindled the flame, this time with bleach.

I cracked my knuckles, a shadow creeping over my eyes. "What did you say?" I asked quietly and slowly.

"Yeah! I'm not a toddler! I'm a woman!" Angel shouted, pulling out her pocket knife.

You heard me. I let my seven year old daughter have a knife. How's _that _for Cool Mom?

"And what do you mean '_when' _she cooks you something? Are you immediately associating cooking with women?" Mabel growled, looking as terrifying as she does on the battlefield.

"'Burn everything you hold dear?'" Blaire asked. "Well, that's actually pretty true. But I want to beat you up, anyway. _Nobody_ insults my apprentice."

We made our steps slow and deliberate, not a wasted movement. The lions joined us, sensing a hunt, and they prowled next to me, growling and licking their chops.

Allen backed up until he was against the wall, looking desperate. "Uh, Alphonse? Help me out here, please! You're my waifu!"

Alphonse glowered. "If you keep calling me that, I'll have to murder you as well." He sat on the couch and flipped through the pages of a book he had pulled from the inside pockets of his labcoat.

Allen laughed nervously. "Ladies, ladies, there's enough of me to go arou- _OH, DEAR GOD, PLEASE PUT THAT CHAIR DOWN!"_

Seventeen minutes and two chairs, four untested poisons, lighter fluid, and a chainsaw later, a beaten up Allen lay on the ground.

I sat on my leather recliner while the girls took their places on the couches.

The cats stared at us in horror and, in some cases, horrified fascination.

The lions sighed and curled up under the coffee table.

I cleared my throat.

"Is everybody calm now?" I asked.

"Yep~!"

"I'm good!"

"Uh-huh. I mean, I pretty much got the urge to pound his face out of my system, so that's good."

"Alright, then," I nodded. "I guess we should name the cats."

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**A/N: Ah**~**, this was super fun to write because I really like Echo... What is up, my beautiful ducklings? I do certainly hope you liked my fast updating! Now if only I would update Toast…**

**Oh, well.**

**And I got reviews! Like, mountains of them! (Three is like ten billion to me. You all rock!)**

**So, I noticed that some of you may not be really noticing the changes I've made here to the last time around. (I think I like the sound of that… Yeah, I'll just call the original version "last time around". It sounds very time-travel-y.)**

**I **_**have **_**made changes, they're all just very subtle and will be more noticeable in the future (because no matter how many hiatuses I take, **_**there will be an end! I will finish this if it is the last thing I do!)**_**, mostly because I actually have an idea as to what the hell I'm actually doing this time. No censorship, though, so sorry for those faint of heart. I just feel like some of my characters cuss a lot, and adding asterisks sort of interrupts the flow of reading, ya know?**

**And SugoiAuthorToBe has been with me since I first published the original! I love ya, man! I also got a review from Fuyu Uzumemein. You rock! Honesty is awesome! Apple Jack all the way!**

**If I knew you in real life, I would kiss you guys (on the cheek though, unless you happened to be real-life Kakashi). So for now, have virtual hugs!**


	4. Chapter 4: Alphonse

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**Chapter Four**

**First Person, Limited, Alphonse**

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**.**

The day had started out a normal one.

I had woken up at five, gotten a breakfast espresso from my artfully crafted coffee machine (all the vitamins, minerals, and calories needed to last me until dinner. Breakfast and lunch were formalities at this point, but dinner was a social event necessary for bonding and increases teamwork which, in turn, increases general productivity.), finished my designs on the latest weapon, one that was sure to get me a raise, and gone to the new room Allen and I were putting the finishing touches on.

Though Allen and I were complete opposites, and I still wasn't quite sure how Allen and I had become "friends", we worked well together. I was the brains, he was the braun. That's how it worked. So whenever I had a major project, for instance, the new ballroom for mass meetings, I did all the double checking, the conducting, and the measurements while Allen did the heavy lifting and made coffee.

Allen was surprisingly strong for such a lithe body structure, able to lift up to three times his normal body weight of one hundred twenty pounds.

Of course, part of it was thanks to my (only slightly dangerous and almost hilariously illegal) genetically enhancing pills that altered parts of a regular human's body structure to maintain more muscle and fat per cubic inch. Of course, other drugs I used allowed extra flexibility so as not to strain the body as much, and several others I used added more platelets, stem cells, and white blood cells while replacing red blood cells with more… _advanced _ones so as to speed up the healing and regrowth of one's body.

This was the type of technology I excelled in- the kind that most governments would start _wars _over.

It was also the type Leader didn't really approve of, but it helped our branch in infiltration. You'd never expect tiny five foot one Mabel to bench over two hundred pounds, would you?

Leader never used the drugs herself, though, but she was stronger than the best of us. I suspected it had something to do with the extra veins she had in her body, the ones filled with something my monitors couldn't identify. I had wanted to test on them, but had to refrain since it was something that seemed extremely fragile.

After a quick lunch of coffee and leftovers from whatever Mabel had made for breakfast, I'd gone back to work.

Angel and Blaire had left on a quick mission, only expected to be gone for a couple of hours to blow up some store houses a few miles away.

"Allen, are you done with the paint, yet?" I asked, a few screws hanging out of the corner of my mouth.

"Yeah, Alphonse!" he shouted from somewhere down below me. "Do you want me to do anything else?"

"No, not yet," I called back. "Get me another coffee, would you? I'm running on three hours, here."

"You only slept for three hours?" Allen asked. "And how the hell did you end up on the chandelier?"

I looked down. "Just because I'm not a field operative-" I started.

"Yeah, yeah, you can still 'complete the basic courses necessary to stay in your comfortable, totally overfunded position in the Main,'" he quoted, referring to the Main Branch in the usual slang of those in the Souls.

I rolled my eyes and tightened the screws, after all, wouldn't it be bad if the chandelier fell while I was still on it?

That's when Angel came in the room.

"Al-Allen!" she called, stumbling on her words the way she does when she's excited. "Allen, Alphonse! C'mere, c'mere! It's meeting time and we have info- uh, in-for-mal in-tro-duc-tions because I found kitties!"

I blinked from my seat on the swinging lamp as she tugged Allen out of the room and came back with a trail of felines parading after her.

"Alphonse! Where aaaare you?" she asked, turning in circles in the center of the room.

"Up here, Angel," I called back.

She looked up and positively _beamed _at me, making my lips twitch up in a smile. Angel grabbed a pillar as I watched, away from my work, to make sure she was safe. Leader would skin me alive if Angel got hurt because I wasn't paying attention to her. The seven year old, more athletic than any other child her age, climbed up the pillar and monkey-barred her way across the rafters until she reached me.

"Hey, Alphonse!" she sang, taking a bold leap from the a rafter that was _much _too far away to safely jump from into my arms.

"Don't do that," I said evenly, pretending I didn't almost have a heart attack from her little stunt. "If you get hurt, Leader would kill me. Slowly. With my own untested weapons."

She giggled. "Mama Song wouldn't do that, silly! Mama Song would only maim, or hospitalize, or maybe torture you. But not kill, Mabel likes you too much to let Mama kill you."

I sighed and let her have her way, pulling out a small gun filled with foam bullets. Of course, though, these had small metal ball bearings in them so they had a bit of weight, and if used correctly, could ruin somebody's jugular, as well as their day, but I primarily used them for pushing buttons that were far away when I was too busy to move.

Aiming carefully and adjusting my glasses, I fired two of them to knock over a switch and lower the chandelier.

Angel "whoa!"'d all the way down until we stopped, the last plastic pieces (glass was too heavy to balance properly, and I was too impatient to cut glass instead of mold plastic) just barely kissing the ground as I hopped off, Angel still swung onto my hip.

She jumped down, nimble as the animals she had brought in, and led her small parade of animals back up the stairs.

We took a few hidden pathways inside the walls to get to the lounge in a timely manner, the kits staring at everything with mild interest.

I felt my eyes narrow slightly behind my glasses. Those weren't normal cats- they were too aware of their surroundings, acting as if they had lucid thought patterns. Normal cats don't do that. Specially trained and/or genetically modified cats did, like Leader's lions, but these… I never tested on regular cats, or at least I never tested on cats and freed them. And, according to Angel who was skipping along side me and telling her tale of how she found the felines, they were found outside the warehouse belonging to one of the self-proclaimed "rivals" of the Lost Souls. (That thought made me want to laugh- as if their rag-tag gang had _anything _on _Echo Song's_ team, especially not the Main Branch of the Souls.)

If they were found directly outside the place Blaire and Angel were sent to destroy, on what the "rivals" thought was _their _territory, they could be plants, spies, even. Maybe we had underestimated them, and they managed to achieve what I had done to the lions? But what was with the odd coloring?

As I mused, Angel chatted, and soon enough we arrived at the lounge.

We ran through the introductions, and I kept mine as short as possible, attempting to give as little information away as I could. Though I didn't know why we were introducing ourselves to _cats_, I caught Leader's eye and she glanced at Angel. Ah, practice for her, then.

I waited until introductions were over to ask some questions, but, as per usual, Allen did something stupid. I calmly read my book until the offender was thoroughly beaten by the girls, and Leader announced, "I guess we should name the cats."

It was a statement, not a suggestion, and we all seated around the coffee table while Allen lay beat up on the floor. The cats sat on top of the coffee table, which seemed like the safest place to be from the lions, in the center of our loose circle.

"I wanna go, I wanna go!" Angel immediately said, sitting on the couch closest to Leader's recliner.

"Manners," Leader reminded sternly.

"Oh. May I please go first, Leader?" Angel asked politely, a soldier-like look in her eyes.

"You may, Angel," she nodded

I calmly adjusted my glasses, one of my hands subtly signalling _Threat? Suspicious._

_Threat possible, _she signed back.

Angel strolled forward, a cat already in mind. She ignored the orange cat's death stare as she plucked the pale violet cat off of the table and into her lap. "You're gonna be Velvet!" Angel cooed softly. "We'll have to train you not to eat the rats."

Velvet blinked in what seemed to be slight confusion until two of Angel's pet rats (specifically trained for short-distance message delivery, infiltration, and detectors of most natural disasters) ran along the edge of the room before crawling into Angel's chair to settle on her shoulders for a nap.

_Spies? _I turned a page in my book.

_Possible. Possible ten wanted men turned into cats. _I blinked, unable to tell if she was joking or not. I double checked the translations in my head- It was possible they could be spies, but it was also possible that they could be ten wanted criminals turned into cats? She _had _to be joking.

After a quick cursory glance at her face, it was obvious she wasn't.

Okay, I knew that everybody in this branch didn't have the most stable mentalities, but for now I was forced to trust her judgement. Once you can't trust your leader, your existence has lost its worth. That's what I believed. I trusted Echo for this long, and she's kept me alive. I had best trust her on this, as well.

Blaire went next, since she was sitting next to Angel, and she glanced around a bit before plucking the silver one from the table.

She held the small cat by his scruff as she twisted her wrist back and forth as if to see him from different angles. Finally snapping, the cat hissed and lashed out at her, making her drop him on instinct. As he attempted to scramble away, Blaire swooped him up once more, grabbed her hoodie, and dropped him in it. After she held both ends closed, she looked at Leader. "This one'll be Fluffernutter," she decided monotonously.

Leader blinked at her, her face void of all emotion. "That's a bit degrading, isn't it?"

Blaire sighed. "Fine then." She poured the cat out of the hoodie and held him, Lion King style. "I DUB THEE… _SIR _FLUFFERNUTTER _THE THIRD_!"

Leader blinked at her once, twice, three times… "Alright. Mabel, you go next."

Sir Fluffernutter III screamed in that way only enraged cats could before squirming around. Prepared this time, Blaire kept a tight grip on him, holding him so he couldn't scratch her.

"Mabel, you can go," Blaire smiled charmingly, closing her eyes. So charmingly, in fact, it was kind of frightening. Blaire turned her smile to Sir Fluffernutter III, who froze, confusion evident on his face. Then she opened her eyes slowly, and all the color seemed to drain out of Fluffer's face.

Mabel snickered. "That's terrifying, Blaire," Mabel told her seriously, managing to hold that face for two seconds before cracking up again.

Blaire put the traumatized cat back down, and as soon as his paws hit the couch, he hissed at her before shooting back to the coffee table.

Mabel grinned and played eenie meenie miney moe until she grabbed the orange cat with dots and boldly announced, "This. Is. _SPARTAAAGGHHH!"_ with as much vigor and emotion as Blaire, holding him as if he was Simba and standing like the coffee table from which she had picked Sparta was Pride Rock.

Leader let out a long and low sigh, her hands covering her face.

"I will not question them. I will not question them. I will not question them," she muttered into her hands.

Sometimes being a leader of a group filled with oddities was challenging.

I held my hand carefully close to her shoulder so as not to touch her, but still allow her to feel my body heat. It was like patting her shoulder comfortingly, haphephobic's edition.

After a few shuddering breaths, she regained her composure and sat back up.

"My turn!"

"Holy shhhhnikey!" Blaire shouted, jumping up and scrambling backwards on the couch, nearly elbowing Angel in the face. "How the he-eck did _you _get here?"

"Well, Blaire, when a mommy loves a daddy very much-" a newly revived Allen began.

"Shut up! That's not what I meant, ya Aryan idiot!"

Allen gasped and daintily put his hand on his chest, as if her words had physically hurt him. "Oh, Blaire, you wound me so!"

Angel giggled.

Mabel laughed with her.

I felt my eye twitch.

The lions under the coffee table yawned.

Leader sighed again and asked if I had migraine medicine on me.

I handed her two pills and she took them dry.

Finally signaled to go, Allen quickly scooped up the half-and-half kitten- and by that, I mean the cat was half black, half white, perfectly split down the middle. It was so… symmetrical, and it appeared to be natural. So perfect, in fact, I flat out asked Leader if I could take some samples and replicate it so as to have a small army of perfect chimera cats.

As I was reaching for the syringe I always had on hand, she answered, "Not yet, Alphonse," and I was forced to slowly lower the needle and slip it back into its place on my utility belt, the cats monitoring my movements carefully, some with mild apprehension, some with varying amounts of fear.

Smart cats.

We continued going around the circle, grabbing and naming cats, until all of us had at least one cat each. I had grabbed the Crayola yellow kitten, one that seemed to not be as observant as the others, but still not too prone to breaking anything. I had named him Yellow Cat, which Blaire and Angel had booed at. I wasn't going to put any thought into anything I didn't have to, especially when this certain anything could quite easily be a spy. I refused to take any cats other than the one I had.

Leader had the black one and the one with the odd orange design on its face, whom she named Night and Whirl, and Angel had Velvet and a red one she had taken to calling Dinosaur (even as an advanced seven year old, her naming skills were still at the second grade level.).

Allen had named his cat Crack, after both its tendency to talk to itself and attempt to run through walls and its split down the middle. He was banned from having another kitten after he held his cat up and pretended to fly it through the air like it was a toy.

Mabel had Sparta and Grub, a large, dirt brown kitten with stitch marks all over its body.

Blaire had Sir Fluffernutter III and a blue one she called Marco, after the game Marco Polo since he seemed to be a water-loving cat.

Finally done, I retreated back to my lab after a quick dinner of frozen pizza and bread, a Yellow Cat tucked under one arm.

A small, devious smirk wormed its way to my lips.

Maybe Leader wouldn't mind if I just took a bit of DNA from Yellow Cat. Just a small drop of blood from the needle hidden in my ring. The one _coincidentally_ on my middle finger on the hand holding the "cat". The creature wouldn't even realize it was being observed.

Maybe then I could get some answers on these strange cats.

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**A/N: Wow, that took a lot more effort than it should have to write. And, if you didn't notice, I combined two of the characters and changed the others a bit to make them fit. Mabel is actually what I got from mixing a little bit of Artemis's genius and love for poisons with Ellie's personality and awesome body-language-reading-skills-and-stuff. I made Mabel and Echo siblings, too, which should make their bond a little easier to understand, as well and do… **_**things **_**to their backstory. Allen is Kaze, just a bit de-Gary-Sue-ified, and Alphonse is… well, I didn't do much, other than change Apollo's wacky hairstyle and his name.**

**Not quite sure what I'll do for the pairings, though I know for certain that Echo will either be with Itachi or Obito. Both would be super hard... -.-"**

**Maybe I'll pair Mabel with someone, too… hm…**

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Allen- Zetsu (Crack)

Alphonse- Deidara (Yellow Cat)

Angel- Konan (Velvet); Sasori (Dinosaur)

Blaire- Hidan (Sir Fluffernutter III); Kisame (Marco)

Echo- Tobito (Whirl); Itachi (Night)

Mabel- Pein (Sparta), Kakuzu (Grub)


End file.
